Journal...day 3

C’est la ving-quatre Juillet aujourd’hui.

Today we made Ciabatta, pain de Lodeve, pain Breisan, pain Viennois and brioche.

The ciabatta was different to the way I’m used to making it as chef mixed the dough and then added huile d’olive once it was hydrated, giving it a subtle flavour after baking. The ciabatta I make usually has no oil in it and as I said before, is mixed for a lot less and then has a longer fermentation process with more folds(rabat).  Another difference is that after the first hour of fermentation, the dough is then put onto a floured couche for the secondary fermentation, then patted out into a rectangle and then when it is about to be baked, its cut directly on the couche and then placed onto the conveyor belt to be loaded in the oven. We added chorizo powder to the dough which gave a beautiful smoked paprika flavour to the bread and a lovely russet colour. Once baked we ate some of this with Jambon extra sec, this looked and tasted like serano ham, with that lovely flavour that is imparted by the pig’s diet of acorns.

The pain de Lodeve is speciality bread from the Lodeve region/city, whereby once it’s cut into large ciabatta size loaves, it’s floured with farine T80 to form a nice crust once it’s baked. It’s made with farine T65 and farine 80 so has a slight nutty flavour and it develops a deep brown coloured crust.

The pain Breisan is made with farine T65 and gaude which is flour made from roasted barley. This we shaped into batards...the gaude gives the bread a very unique flavour, it’s hard to describe, but if you can smell roasted barley, that’s what the bread tastes like.

Pain viennois is enriched bread that contains farine T55, sel, sucre, beurre, levure, levain et l’eau. There is no South African product that I can compare it to, but it’s used as a base for viennoiserie with chocolate chips or praline or even sucre grave.

After class I went around Lyon with Pierre-Jean who is one of the students who is with me this week in the bakery.

We first went to his place in Saxe-Gambetta and on the way there we stopped at a few of the local bakeries in the area, he showed me his favourite one where he gets his pastries and breads. I noticed that the products with praline seem to all be red or rather the praline is red. This is a speciality of Lyon.

We went to a hotel in the Hotel de Ville area where students from the institute do some of their training in first year. It has an old world feeling to it, like an old French colony hotel somewhere.
Then we walked a short distance across the Rhone river; it was such a beautiful day, loads of people riding by on bicycles, we could see the Eiffel Tower (not the real one, just a smaller version J ) and this huge building which name I can’t remember which Pierre told me is going to be made into the gastronomic centre of Lyon with 9 restaurants servicing either 15000 or 17000 square metres... the place is massive, like a palace even.

After all this walking we went to a boat restaurant/bar call Ayers Rock(like the place in Australia) and had some rose with grapefruit syrup as it was Pierre's birthday. Here it’s quite common to have a beer or some wine with a flavoured syrup. A common drink is called a Monaco which is beer with mixed berry syrup which has a pink colour to it...I wonder what the Windhoek [ a popular local South  African beer ] marketing department would have to say about that :D

Around 7pm (it stays light here until around 10pm, sometimes even 11pm here) we walked to the Bellecour station so I could buy a monthly metro card (56euros). People are very polite here, greeting everyone as they enter or pass each other and saying thanks after any service is rendered and greeting when leaving as well. Everyone from cleaners to bouncers and civil/municipality workers.

I went home, did laundry, and got changed and went to meet Pierre shortly before 9 as he wanted to party a bit for his birthday  and for the fact that he had been accepted into a program with the alliance to spend six months in Shanghai,China. We went to a Lebanese restaurant which made awesome falafels and pitas with different toppings. For about 5euros we got either a falafel/salad box or I chose to have the La Greqe pita with falafels, tapenade, tomato and cucumber, a herbed yogurt and feta. It was so good but I was stuffed so couldn’t finish the last bit. The restaurant uses fresh ingredients that are prepared daily...the vibe and food reminded me of Lola’s in Long Street, Cape Town.

The restaurant was in the area near the opera house (can’t remember the name of the area) where there is a statue built by the famous French architect, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who also designed the statue of liberty.

We then went to a bar and had a few cocktails and then headed home...it seems that at night there are more foreigners out and about, as the locals don’t seem to be as active at night as Cape Town is. There are a lot more people using public transport late at night, even old people, right up to midnight as the metro runs until shortly after midnight and buses until 2am.